Evaluation of simulated transport vibration and package design performance on the quality of banana during storage

Abstract

Vibration during transportation can cause mechanical damage and quality loss in produce. Proper packaging design can help minimize its impact. The study evaluated the effect of the package and transportation on banana quality during storage. The trans-simulation approach was used for this experiment. In the first stage, the peak frequency during the real transport experiment was identified and then applied to the vibration simulator to investigate the effect of the simulated vibration (second stage) on the quality of the banana including mass, color, surface area, and vitamin C packaged in two corrugated boxes (CB) designs including CB1 (one piece-single wall-3 ply) and CB2 (two piece-double wall-5 ply) for 10 days. The obtained power spectral density (PSD) value was 2 Hz. The results showed that the CB1 package design exhibited better protective performance than the CB2 package for banana transportation as CB1 showed less package transmissibility compared to CB2. The package as an independent variable showed the highest effect on the mass loss %, color lightness, and yellowness in bananas. The vibration increased the occurrence of surface area reduction and conversion of color from green to yellow. The bananas retained without package and vibration recorded the highest mass loss % in all days of storage. The effect of vibration on the vitamin C of bananas was found on day 10 of the vibrated fruit (CB1 =0.04 g/100 g, CB2 =0.03 g/100 g). Using the appropriate package design and structure is important to avoid damage and quality degradation in fruit quality during transportation.